HILLARY'S WAR DOUBLE TALK
'John Kerry could not have said it worse himself.' (swift-vet audio)
MISSUS CLINTON'S SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE PROBLEM - PART THREE
by Mia T, 2.2.07
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Patently synthetic play-acting and carefully manicured sound bites like Mrs. Clinton's look out of touch. (Mr. Obama's bare-bones Webcast and Web site shrewdly play Google to Mrs. Clinton's AOL.) Besides, the belief that an image can be tightly controlled in the viral media era is pure fantasy. Just ask the former Virginia senator, Mr. Allen, whose past prowess as a disciplined, image-conscious politician proved worthless once the Webb campaign posted on YouTube a grainy but authentic video capturing him in an embarrassing off-script public moment.
The image that Mrs. Clinton wants to sell is summed up by her frequent invocation of the word middle, as in "I grew up in a middle-class family in the middle of America." She's not left or right, you see, but exactly in the center where everyone feels safe....
This how she explains her vote to authorize the war: "I would never have expected any president, if we knew then what we know now, to come to ask for a vote. There would not have been a vote, and I certainly would not have voted for it." John Kerry could not have said it worse himself. No wonder last weekend's "Saturday Night Live" gave us a "Hillary" who said, "Knowing what we know now, that you could vote against the war and still be elected president, I would never have pretended to support it."
Compounding this problem for Mrs. Clinton is that the theatrics of her fledgling campaign are already echoing the content: they are so overscripted and focus-group bland that they underline rather than combat the perennial criticism that she is a cautious triangulator too willing to trim convictions for political gain. Last week she conducted three online Web chats that she billed as opportunities for voters to see her "in an unfiltered way." Surely she was kidding. Everything was filtered, from the phony living-room set to the appearance of a "campaign blogger" who wasn't blogging to the softball questions and canned responses. Even the rare query touching on a nominally controversial topic, gay civil rights, avoided any mention of the word marriage, let alone Bill Clinton's enactment of the federal Defense of Marriage Act....
This, in other words, is a moment of crisis in our history and there will be no do-overs. Should Mrs. Clinton actually seek unfiltered exposure to voters, she will learn that they are anxiously waiting to see just who in Washington is brave enough to act.
Hillary Clinton's Mission Unaccomplished
By FRANK RICH
January 28, 2007
The New York Times
ohn Kerry could not have said it worse himself."
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That wonderful turn of phrase by Frank Rich has the force to knock missus clinton off the stage finally, for good... (and for The Good).
There is a basic flaw in Rich's argument, however. Rich's criticism of clinton and her 'out-of-touch' campaign is constructive, as though clinton and her campaign are fixable.
Rich does not seem to understand that the clinton machine has no other option because its candidate is a dud.
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With a Q score—a measure of celebrity likability among the hoi polloi—in the toilet, missus clinton can win elections only by running virtually unopposed... and then only with the help of protheses, props, poses, PR machines, scripted appearances, screened audiences, vetted questions, Secret Service barracades, secret police, softball settings and sycophantic hosts, fictionalizing, humanizing, digitizing and otherwise hiding the real hillary clinton. And then we have the baggage.... Anyone else but a clinton would have been summarily laughed off the stage. The American people must understand that to get this defective candidate elected, the clintons must pervert the electoral process, turn democracy on its head. That is to say, the best candidate must lose. |
COPYRIGHT MIA T 2007
... While America appears not to be ready for a female president under any circumstances, the post-9/11 realities pose special problems for a female presidential candidate. Add to these the problems unique to missus clinton. The reviews make the mistake of focusing on the problems of the generic female presidential candidate running during ordinary times.
